when the candles are out
by my cure on ice
Summary: and have they not suffered? goku wakes up a girl. [sanzogoku] [hakkaigojyo]
1. it’s great to stay up late

_when the candles are out_  
by Bethany Ten_  
_**chapter 1**: it's great to stay up late

At that age, the _youkai_ body is substantially less susceptible to change by way of physicality, namely because it's done all the maturing it will be doing for the next handful of decades, like an unripened fruit in an airless atmosphere. _Youkai_ physicality is sturdy, if nothing else; it will always remain marginally exempt from the unwritten law of time so long as the _youkai_ in question has lived to see adolescence. Nowadays, the danger of never experiencing the series of mildly alarming miracles that is puberty mounts ever higher, namely because forcibly paving a westward path are a small band of travellers with unusual strength and an unusual detachment towards the value of _youkai_ life.

Son Goku is really without pity for the younger ones. After all, they threw down the gauntlet; he is in no way obligated to pick it back up.

Receiving sermons on the correlation (or lack thereof) between human and _youkai_ development from Hakkai is similar to reading a textbook on the correlation (or lack thereof) between human and _youkai_ development. Hakkai was very skilled with sugarcoating and euphemisms, but regardless, "the birds and the bees" discussion was postponed until the rare event in which Goku actually had a question to ask.

(Gojyo had happily volunteered to have a lengthy talk with Goku, but he changed his mind shortly after becoming absurdly intimate with a paper fan.)

One morning, however, at approximately seventeen minutes past seven, he awoke with a body structure unusually similar to that of Kougaiji's younger half-sister.

In other words, Son Goku awoke one morning at approximately seventeen minutes past seven, and he was a girl.

He paused, mulling over his inability to see his toes past his breasts.

He strode across the room and shook Gojyo awake.

"…ngh," Gojyo said articulately, rolling over.

"_Ero_-kappa, wake _up_."

"Ngh."

"Wake _up_!"

"Ngh."

"Gojyo, I'm a _girl_!"

At the mention of the "g"-word (girl, not Gojyo), the _ero_-kappa in question jackknifed into a sitting position, the antennae-like hairs on his head perking up and around, as though scanning the inn room. They began throbbing as they probed the atmosphere a good six inches away from Goku, and then they lilted towards him almost accusingly, like a pointed finger or deer antlers. Goku found this vaguely perturbing, and flicked them, briefly ignorant of the fact that Gojyo was thoroughly inspecting Goku's new bits.

"Gojyo," Goku repeated with graceless patience, "I'm a _girl_."

"So I see," Gojyo said with graceful impatience.

They sat in silence for a while.

"So what are you going to do now?" Gojyo asked.

"Are you gonna _help_ me?" Goku asked, doing his best to think and talk at the same time.

"I can only perform sex change operations on men," Gojyo said ruefully, not without a faint laceration of apology.

They sat in some more silence for a while.

"Should I go see Sanzo or Hakkai?" Goku asked.

"They should be up in seven minutes," Gojyo said, inspecting the clock on the western wall.

"Okay," Goku said, and decided to take advantage of those seven minutes by plodding back across the room and going back to sleep.

● ● ●

Twenty-seven minutes later—twenty-seven because Hakkai and Sanzo took separate ten-minute baths—Hakkai knocked on their door and opened it, subsequently, and opened his mouth to recite his usual greeting, but to effectively speak one must move one's jaw, and Hakkai's jaw suddenly knew gravity like it never had before. Hakkai's jaw also realized that the hardwood floors were, in fact, made of _hard wood_, and by the time he found it within himself to formulate words and sentences, he was massaging the underside of his chin with a grimace. "Goku! You're—"

"Asleep." Gojyo shoved the coverlets off himself and dusted off his forearms with a theatric yawn. "And a girl," he added, almost as an afterthought. Then he tilted over his bedside to rummage for his clothes. "Not a particularly _bad-looking_ one, either. But still a girl." He found a clean shirt and stacked it atop a pair of clean pants, and massaged the spot beneath his left eye as he climbed out of bed. "Are you sure this shirt is clean?"

"Gojyo, Goku's a _girl_."

"…Hakkai, it's not like I really need the reminder. Where're the towels? And are you sure this shirt is clean?"

"Goku's a _what_?" Goku mumbled, sitting up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with his balled fists.

At that moment, Sanzo walked in, and I'd like to say all hell broke loose, but all he did was blink for a minute.

Then he asked, a vein slowly defining itself in his forehead, "Kougaiji has another sister?"

"_Hakkai_," Gojyo said, rubbing his forehead. "Where the hell are the towels?"

"_Sanzo_," Goku said, rubbing his eyes. "It's _me_."

"Who the hell are you?"

"I'm not quite sure," Hakkai said blandly, dumbfounded.

"For fuck's sake. Towels. _Towels_," Gojyo said, wringing his hands.

"It's _me_, Sanzo! Me! Goku!" Goku said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, except it wasn't, unless you were Goku, who was the one most outwardly affected by this, or unless you were Gojyo, who was in desperate need of a towel lest he trod around incurably cold, wet, and naked and give people all across the globe nasal hemorrhages. "And I'm a _girl_." He poked one of his ample breasts for emphasis. It bobbed agreeably.

Sanzo pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed in exasperation.

He glared at Goku very pointedly.

Goku poked one of his ample breasts again.

Sanzo's hands moved lower down the slope of his nose, and he grunted and swiftly strode far, far away from Goku and Gojyo's room.

Hakkai's mouth opened and closed like that of a dying goldfish.

Gojyo waited until Sanzo's robes swished out of his line of vision, and said, "Sanzo has an aversion towards honkers." Then he walked off to steal Hakkai's still-damp towel, because it didn't really look like he'd be getting his hands on a dry one anytime soon, and besides, Hakkai's towel smelled nice, and it wasn't a crime to smell nice. Goku opened his mouth, presumably to ask about honkers, but then closed it when he realized he really didn't want to know. Instead, he asked about breakfast, and was directed downstairs. Hakkai stayed behind because he felt like it.

Later that morning, Gojyo walked out of the shower, incurably cold, wet, and naked. He walked out of the bathroom, incurably cold, wet, and not so naked because he'd thrown on his boxers, and Hakkai had stolen his towel back, so basically he just walked around cold and wet and sort of naked for the rest of the morning, because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

And it was. It really, really was.

● ● ●

"Well, judging by the rate of pass and influx of this irregular _chi_," Hakkai proclaimed as though people knew what he was talking about, "twelve to fifteen weeks."

"Twelve to fifteen _weeks_!" Goku gasped dramatically. "That's—that's almost—"

He trailed off.

Sanzo pointedly looked at the wall behind Goku—which proved difficult, because Goku's natural aptitude for getting in his face seemed to simply _shimmer_ that day—and said, "And _how_ did he become a girl again?"

"Well—erm—a spell, perhaps—well, we _have_ made our fair share of enemies."

Gojyo chose that moment to chime in in all his sort of naked glory. "Yeah," he said. "They decided we don't suffer enough, so they made Goku _menstrual_."

Sanzo pitched over in a dead faint.

● ● ●

Gojyo, for all his bloated khakis and rumpled muscle shirts and vests, _did_ have an eye for women's fashions. Perhaps he simply knew what he liked to see on his nightly catches; perhaps he was a simple pro at separating the hideous from the aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps he was a homosexual in denial. In a very saintly manner, he left that morning and returned post noon with an assortment of blouses, corsets, vests, and short skirts for the movement-happy boy-turned-girl. He also purchased a pack of women's underthings with the days of the week printed on the ribbon, although Goku wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot barge. ("You'll understand someday," Gojyo sighed paternally, ruffling Goku's silky, if not slightly mussed, hair.)

Goku did, however, take it upon himself to bind aforementioned ample chest, because it would get in the way while fighting.

"Gojyo," Hakkai had said, "you can see up his skirt if he kicks. And he kicks."

Gojyo reasoned that anyone within immediate skirt-peeking range was probably due for a foot smashed into their face, anyway, and Hakkai thought that was logical enough, and that the skirt _was_ a pleasant shade of blue. He told them so, and Gojyo beamed.

"He looks good," Gojyo said, still beaming, looking mightily proud of his ability to transform people into Barbie dolls.

"Yes."

"No, he does _not_ look good," Sanzo said through his gritted teeth, holding a chemical icepack to his temple. "He looks like a _girl_."

"Young woman, actually, if you please."

Sanzo blinked, slowly, and his eyes flicked automatically to the front of Goku's skirt.

Goku followed Sanzo's gaze, and then turned a very uncharacteristic shade of red.

"But _Sanzo_," Gojyo whined, "what about your _honker_ aversion?"

Technically, they all should have realized something was very wrong when Sanzo didn't rip out Gojyo's eyes and feed them to sewer rats. But they were all very distracted by the prospect of Sanzo being distracted by Goku's skirt, which was a pleasant shade of blue and accentuated his slender hips, the bones of which no longer jutted out so awkwardly. Come to think of it, Sanzo _had_ been particularly isolated from close contact with females. If only Gojyo had offered to procure Sanzo a semester of sex ed lessons.

"Well," Gojyo said at last, feeling uncomfortable with his state of good health, "better late than never, I always say." He swiveled around Goku, swiveled around Sanzo's chair, and opened his mouth, prepared to belt into an alto rendition of the actual song titled "The Birds And The Bees". Hakkai quickly realized Gojyo was long overdue for some measure of physical harm, and ground the heel of his boot into Gojyo's toe, eliciting a masculine yelp.

"What was Gojyo gonna say?" Goku asked, placing his hands on his hips, and they were very nice hips.

"Nothing," Hakkai said, his smile aching.

"What's 'menstrual'?"

"Nothing," Hakkai said with considerably more effort, and resisted the urge to burst into tears.

● ● ●

"Goku is now to be referred to with feminine pronouns," Gojyo announced as Goku followed a grievously mentally injured Sanzo downstairs for lunch.

"Gojyo," Hakkai said, his brain feeling very much like a dense, crumpled sponge, "Goku is, in essence if not in body, a boy. Therefore, we shall utilize masculine pronouns in reference to Goku."

"Goku does not look like a man I've seen. Except for that one drag queen back in the desert. But Goku's are _real_, so that doesn't count, either."

"I feel uncomfortable dwelling on the subject of Goku's breasts, Gojyo."


	2. sanzo is smart

_when the candles are out  
_by Bethany Ten  
**chapter 2**: sanzo is smart

The journey continued as per normal as Goku gradually became accustomed to his new body as teenagers did; his diadem was beginning to bear a suspicious resemblance to a tiara, perched glittery gold atop his head. He stopped chewing on his nails, so they metamorphosed into neat, white crescents. But aside from that, he appeared dubiously unaffected by it all, uncomplaining when he fastened his skirts on in the morning and when he laced up his bodice and did everything within his immediate power to maintain the pliability of his body, because it wouldn't do to possess any hindrances. He learned that from Sanzo.

The paper fan rarely saw the light of day.

"Ne, Sanzo," Goku said one day, fiddling with the ribbon in his hair. His sleek brown locks had assumed their original length, which was somewhere near the small of his back, but it was vaguely tamer instead of jutting out in obscene directions. "You haven't insulted me or hit me or anythin' lately. You okay? Or are you really an assassin in disguise or somethin'? …_HEY!_ Where the hell's th' _real_ Sanzo?"

"Shut up," Sanzo muttered, and stood. "Let's go eat."

"Huh?" His animosity vanished as quickly as it came. "But what about Gojyo and Hakkai? They're not back yet."

"Fuck them."

"H-hey! Wait up! Oi, Sanzo!"

Sanzo decided he hated humanity. He hated _youkai_. He hated his life, he hated wearing leather in the summertime, he hated the fact that Gojyo made him doubt the fullness of his hairline, he hated Gojyo. He hated a lot of things, like the way fate had always managed a good laugh at his expense no matter the scenario. But out of those lots of things, those mile-high lists of things Sanzo hated, Son Goku was not among them, but the monkey suffered anyway.

"Sanzo, you know I'm not _really_ a girl, right? 'Cause, you know. I look like one, yeah. And I pee like one, yeah. But I'm not a girl."

"I know," Sanzo said, and hit him.

"Ow!"

"I know," Sanzo said, and asked him what he wanted for lunch.

● ● ●

"They've been leavin' us alone a lot," Gojyo mused.

"Yes," Hakkai agreed sentiently, "I suppose they have. Well, Sanzo may feel obligated to protect his ward from any and all manner of dishonorable suitors."

"You can hit the monkey, but you can't hit on the monkey."

Hakkai smiled, all arced, closed eyes and tight lips. "That's correct. Goku _is_ eighteen, and he _has_ been transformed into a moderately attractive young woman."

"Mm-hmm."

"The sort you would be attracted to."

Gojyo fell out of his chair and clambered back onto it in one fell swoop. He adjusted his headband, dusted his arms, and brushed off his pants before interlacing his knuckles and resting his chin on them, looking as though he had just not topped out of his chair, arms akimbo and eyes the size of Goku's dinner dishes. "I'm sorry," he said, sounding genuinely apologetic as he took Hakkai's hand in his, "I hallucinated. I tend to do that. Would you mind repeating that for this delusional soul?"

Hakkai repeated that, and Gojyo, accordingly and accommodatingly, repeated the process of falling out of his chair and clambering back onto it in one fell swoop. He adjusted his headband, dusted his arms, and brushed off his pants before interlacing his knuckles and resting his chin on them. He opened his mouth, possibly to plead insanity, but shut it immediately as he met Hakkai's calculating, smiling, carefully shadowed gaze. "Hakkai, what the hell are—"

Hakkai's fingers twitched surreptitiously.

Gojyo swallowed, scowled, and shoved his teacup forward. "Feh. Even if the thought _did_ cross my mind, Sanzo would slaughter me. And it would be slow. And painful. I don't do slow or painful. Except in bed," he added, as an afterthought, dwelling on that fact for a second, "for a certain value of 'painful'."

Hakkai laughed, genuine delight twisting its way onto his pretty face; Gojyo absently took his hand again, playing idly with the grooves between Hakkai's fingers, and suddenly, everything was alright with the world. Certainly not great or amazing, but alright, and Gojyo never took alright for granted.

Well, not quite alright. Because Goku was still a girl, and Sanzo was still emotionally retarded (nothing new) and grievously mentally injured.

● ● ●

The thing was that Sanzo liked Goku better when Goku was a boy. It was nothing personal; he wasn't a chauvinist pig or anything of that sort. In fact, when it came to women, Sanzo was courteous (still a little on the gruff side), smelled a bit nicer, and, above all, was completely detached. Genjyo Sanzo quite literally had no time whatsoever for girls. He never had any time whatsoever for girls. He had enough on his plate already—namely, Goku—oh, and maybe all that saving the world shit—without having to tend to the beck and call of a woman (because, undoubtedly, women had their beck and call).

It was just that…well.

The thing was that Sanzo wasn't so much of a complete asshole so as to only be tolerant of Goku when Goku had soft curves and long eyelashes and eyes that positively glowed something topaz at any prospects concerning food, Sanzo, or combat, or possibly some unattainable mix of the three. It was just that…

It was just that…

Gojyo's policy regarding women's clothing was very…flagrant.

And the fact that he had to adjust his policy to conform to the mold of a movement-happy boy-turned-girl—

—well.

The fact that he had to adjust his policy at all was startling in itself.

So there, Genjyo Sanzo found himself faced with the most daunting adversaries at all:

Goku's suitors.

Goku's suitors. Goku's. _Suitors_. _Goku's_ suitors. They were supposed to be completely incapable of existing in the first place, but then they _did_, and they were everywhere, it seemed. They were lecherous sleazebags with appreciative eyes. They had a special place in their hearts (or in their dicks) for brunettes with golden eyes; they usually could be found in the local bars, the atmosphere around them painted thickly with the scent of cheap booze and equally inexpensive cologne. They made him yearn for Gojyo's company. At least Gojyo, regardless of the fact that he apparently had an affinity for fashion makeovers, had a decent sense of what, exactly, was irrevocably, infinitely, perpetually, forevermore _off-limits_.

Sanzo liked bars, normally. They were cesspools of human filth, and Sanzo was an observer of examples of filth and a tasteful drinker simultaneously.

Every sixteen minutes (he ticked off the seconds in his head), however, whilst dwelling in one of these bars, he would find Goku unwittingly being accosted by some rogue. Goku was socially incapable of fending for himself, so, naturally, being the nice, all-around saintly guy he was, Sanzo handled any and all dealings with other well-meaning people. A charmingly worded sentence and a euphemism here or there, followed or preceded by a reference to religion, often did the trick. Knight in shining armor, and all that. Or knight in tight leather gear and flowing white robes.

"Finish that sentence and I swear to Buddha I will find _some way _to make you shit out your mouth instead of your ass."

Yes, Sanzo did take a particular pleasure in fending off those who dared impede upon Goku the Monkey Queen's honor. After all, if anyone was allowed to impede upon Goku's honor, it was _him_. He deserved that right. Gojyo could go fuck himself. Everyone else could go fuck themselves.

"He was kind of nice," Goku was saying obliviously, his hand tangled in the throng of fabric somewhere at the small of Sanzo's back, "though he smelled really bad, right, eh, Sanzo?"

"He was a shithead."

Goku's smile was a little unnerving.

"A _shithead_," Sanzo insisted.

Goku tittered malevolently, just like a bodhisattva somewhere on high was as well, but before Sanzo could accurately weigh the religious retribution for killing monkeys, a random man slipped into the stool beside Goku and abruptly began a vicious cycle of grinning and winking lasciviously and making offhandedly lewd comments.

Another person became well-acquainted with Sanzo's _killer_ left hook.

● ● ●

"Heal me."

Hakkai dabbed his brow with a damp towelette.

"_Heal me_," Sanzo demanded to the best of his ability.

"Refrain from talking, please; your jaw is swelling," Hakkai said cheerfully.

"He started it," Goku said, his voice floating from somewhere outside of Sanzo's peripherals.

"You started a _bar fight_?" That was Gojyo, who had his pants on, so he was only fifty percent naked now.

"…No."

"_Why?_"

"Because."

Smiling blissfully, Hakkai increased the pressure on the towelette that was now making a nice fringed imprint on Sanzo's skull; Sanzo hissed. "I do hope your credit card will be able to cover the damages, Sanzo-sama; you _did_ start it, after all."

"I did _not_ start _anything_," Sanzo insisted.

"How did it _happen_?" Gojyo asked, incredulous.

"I met this nice guy!" Goku chirped.

Gojyo and Hakkai's left eyebrows raised in unison.

"He offered to buy me dinner!"

Up went the other eyebrows.

"And breakfast, and lunch, an'…"

Then the eyelids.

"…then Sanzo punched him."

The corners of their lips.

"An' he toppled over the counter…"

Hakkai looked at Gojyo.

"…an' the guy tried to hit Sanzo with a bottle and talk to me at the same time."

Gojyo looked at Hakkai.

"Was shit at multitasking," Sanzo said, wringing his hands.

"I'm sorry," Hakkai said, eyes doing that gleam thing that never failed to creep Sanzo out, "but was that supposed to be in your defense?"

"Fuck all of you."

Goku cracked a cheerful smile. If the monk was cussing, everything was gonna be fine.

Gojyo and Hakkai's smiles were just. Painfully conspiratorial.

Some part of Sanzo's brain helpfully alerted him to the fact he was doomed.

He pointedly ignored it, like he always did.

(That never did him much good, either.)

"…_Dinner_," Sanzo pleaded.

"What about dinner?" Gojyo said mildly, fingers twitching.

"That guy. Him," Sanzo said, wringing his hands. "_All_ of them. Goku. _Dinner_."

"Sanzo, 're you gonna buy me dinner since that guy isn't gonna?"

"B-but—"

"Yes, yes," Hakkai said soothingly. "Of _course_ you can buy him dinner, Sanzo."

"But…"


End file.
